The server won’t be moving now – I have found that the database is way too big to move to Google AppEngine and I’ve tracked down one of the reasons why it was running so slow and eliminated that. I am aware there is some weirdness going on that requires investigation such as some pages showing differently if you’re logged in versus not. I will look into these as soon as I can.

I will still be adding the ability for Supporters to have their own domain name attached to their diary, as that doesn’t rely on Google.

I have moved some of our other sites onto a new server and thus spreading the load out a bit better. This has some infrastructure benefits as well so hopefully things will improve once I can spend some time sorting out the underlying issues.

It’s very likely that the DearDiary.Net server will switch to use Google AppEngine since this now supports PHP and the DD.Net is all in PHP. The database is quite large however and there will be a bit of downtime while it’s all copied across and while the nameservices catch up. I don’t have a fixed date for this yet as it has to work in around my full time job schedule which is pretty hectic at the moment. I suspect sometime after the 20th Feb or there abouts though.

I have today released a new feature for the DearDiary.Net site which puts the power to dispose of spammers firmly in the hands of our trusted users. I will no longer need to verify that people who are marked as spammers should in fact be removed from the site. Instead of relying on any user to advise me that a site is spam, I have changed the system a little.

Trusted users will have their account marked as ‘Moderator’ and will be able to mark sites as spam (which will remove them from any visibility from search engines, as well as remove them from the front page lists or recent updates lists) without any interaction from me. Click the menu bar at the top that shows ‘Mark as Spammer’ and they’ll be gone.

To do this, you need to be marked as a moderator. I will only be allowing people who I’ve known on the site (or in person) for a while to do this, as it’s extremely powerful and requires an element of trust. If you would like to become a moderator and you’ve been on the site for a while and are reasonably well known to me, please let me know your username and I will consider your request

This should help return DearDiary.Net to the more community focussed site that it should be rather than the continual spam cleanup site it has become of late!

I’ve long since abandoned the idea that DearDiary.Net will ever pay for the server on which it’s hosted and as a result I’ve set up some other websites that do assist with paying the server fees. They can be found at http://imho.qodo.org/ and http://www.reviewmacsoftware.com/

But, and this is where my call for help comes in, I REALLY need some new content to put on them. Please have a look at the sites, and if you think you can contribute an article or two (or as many as you’d like) it would really help us out. We can attribute you as the author and link to your diary (or a personal homepage of your choice) which may well assist you if you want to write semi-professionally or professionally for other sites in the future.

Thanks for your time reading this – if you have any questions you can raise them here or drop me an e-mail to steve (at) kabarty . net – thanks again!

I have updated the server – which should result in increased speed (both the hardware has been upgraded and the software running it)

However, the software side of things has caused some compatibility issues which I’ve tracked down and currently believe I have fixed. With that said though, there may be something I haven’t spotted that’s acting weirdly. If that’s the case, please leave a comment here and I will look into it for you.

Hopefully the upgrade does let the site load quicker, otherwise it was all a waste of time!